I did venture out because it stopped raining for a while. On walking towards a dike and hoping to find something special hidden behind it, a thought occurred to me. Writing has become a disenchanting place for the very same reason it once was an enchanting place: it is a place of my own. Ever since I was a little girl, I had this sneaking suspicion the world isn’t all too interested in my presence in it, let alone what I have to say to it. If anything, it doesn’t at all understand whatever point it is I’m trying to make. The space called writing does. When I discovered that place, it felt like I had found something I’d been looking for ever since I was born, without having known I was looking for anything to start with. In my space of words, the things I said made perfect sense. But I think I may have made a mistake. I have welcomed the very world that does not understand me into my space. All sorts of people now sit next to my words, between or across from them, some point at them and subsequently their foreheads, some tell my words to go away, some hardly even register there are even any words in that space with them and if they do, a lot of them will simply ignore my words.
By the time I hit the slope of that dike and was climbing to the top, I realized that I need to find a way of chasing that world out of my space and reclaiming it as my own. And then, it poured down on me. The next lesson I learned was that even what’s hidden behind a dike can be disappointing. And that I should never have washed my winter coat as it is no longer water resistant.
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published: 2008-12-09